Well the intro says it all. I stumbled upon what I consider probably the greatest hack for the miniature painting hobby of all time. It is truly pure genius! for quite awhile I have been racking my brain to come up with a way to mix hobby paints. I tend to paint in mad fury for a couple of days to a couple of weeks and then suddenly lose interest or get tangled up with real life responsibilities. That means my paints sometimes sit for weeks on end between uses. As you can guess I tend to have some serious settling issues when they sit idle that long. I have tried a variety of avenues. I played around with my kids Erector Set and an electric motor. I tried to craft something out of their Lego's. I tried a few other approaches with absolutely no success. Being the frugal miniature painter and gamer I just couldn't bring myself to buy one from Micromark at $65, I mean how many miniatures could you buy for that! So I just resorted to shaking them manually until my elbow hurt. That was until this weekend.
I'm not exactly sure what site I was on but as I'm browsing through photos of other peoples miniature projects I stumbled onto a photo that just floored me. What was it you ask? Well lets answer that with a riddle. What do you get when you cross a bar clamp with a jigsaw? This!
Shake Well? Damn right I will!
I saw a photo of a similar contraption and was floored by its simplicity, versatility and effectiveness. So much so that I had to run out the next day and get the necessary supplies. I already had a jigsaw, in fact I have two so there wasn't any cost to me for that part. It does look like you can get one for as little as $25.99 on Amazon and possibly less at places like Harbor Freight, at a home improvement store. Our Menard's had one for $18, looks like Walmart has one for that price as well. You might also be able to pick one up at a garage sale for less. All those options are way less than $65 and you get a dual purpose tool out of it.
Next up is a bar clamp. I picked up this set at Menard's for a whopping $4.99, $4.55 if I send in the rebate! A very nice set with 2 bar clamps and a variety of clips. I went with a 4"-5" bar clamp. I was concerned that anything larger might no fit into the chuck of the jigsaw and why spend more than you need to. This one fit in nicely with the chuck and I was done. That was it, nothing more. I did go ahead and remove the base/foot off the bottom of the saw just to give me more room to open the clamp jaws up.
Citadel Old-Check (Yes i know its a P3 paint but same type of pot!)
Citadel New-Check
Army Painter/Vallejo-Check
Older Citadel Metallic (white liquid is the separated acrylic medium)
Post 30 sec in the mixer.
To be honest this saw is the lower quality of the two I own so I don't imagine it will every get used as a saw again. I can fit any of the hobby paints in it with no problem. I was worried about the dropper bottles having very little surface on their tops, if it becomes an issue I can always rig up something to help hold it in place. I had to share this, it was just too good to keep to myself. Good luck and enjoy.
